Vast amounts of digital data are now generated daily by people as they go about their lives, yet social researchers are struggling to exploit it. At the same time, the challenges faced by society in the 21st century are growing ever more complex, and demands research that is bigger in scale, more collaborative and multi-disciplinary than ever before.

This cutting-edge volume provides an accessible introduction to innovative digital social research tools and methods that harness this ‘data deluge’ and successfully tackle key research challenges. Contributions from leading international researchers cover topics such as:

Qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research

Data management

Social media and social network analysis

Modeling and simulation

Survey methods

Visualizing social data

Ethics and e-research

The future of social research in the digital age

This vibrant introduction to innovative digital research methods is essential reading for anyone conducting social research today.

Peter Halfpenny and Rob Proctor

Chapter 1: Introduction and Overview

Kingsley Purdam and Mark Elliot

Chapter 2: The Changing Social Data Landscape

Kingsley Purdam and Mark Elliot

Chapter 3: Exploiting New Sources of Data

Joe Murphy

Chapter 4: Survey Methods: Challenges and Opportunities

Paul S. Lambert

Chapter 5: Advances in Data Management for Social Survey

Mark Birkin and Nick Malleson

Chapter 6: Modelling and Simulation

Paul S. Lambert, William J. Browne and Danius T. Michaelides

Chapter 7: Contemporary developments in statistical software for social scientists

Lawrence Ampofo, Simon Collister, Ben O’Loughlin and Andrew Chadwick

Chapter 8: Text Mining and Social Media: When Quantitative Meets Qualitative, and Software Meets People

Supplements

From machine learning tweets to ethical considerations of Big Data, this timely book provides a highly interdisciplinary survey of innovative digital research methods. The book uniquely blurs qualitative and quantitative approaches to provide refreshingly forward-looking insights for those new to digital research, but also for those more experienced in the field.

Dhiraj Murthy

Goldsmiths, University of London

This very-up-to-date volume provides an accessible introduction to innovative digital social research tools and methods that harness this "data deluge" and successfully tackle key research challenges. It provides a highly interdisciplinary survey of innovative digital research methods and uniquely blurs qualitative and quantitative approaches to provide insights for those new to digital research, but also for those more experienced in the field. Contributions from leading international researchers cover topics such as qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research, and data management.

Karl M van Meter

Bulletin de Methodologie Sociologique

Innovations in Digital Research Methods provides a??? timely, insightful survey of eResearch methods. It is an essential title that joins a select few in representing and substantiating digital methods knowledge in our field at this time.

Sarah Lewthwaite

International Journal of Research & Method in Education

This text provides a refreshing approach to research. A useful guide for researchers interested in digital methods.

This books brings clarity to what digital research methods are in relation to traditional ones. As we move towards using more digital data in our research this book provides some clarity as to how we might conduct reliable studies with new types of data.

This textbook is going to be adopted only as supplemental reading. The ideas discussed there are general and the text is lacking a more practical methodological discussion. The idea of eResearch is valid and is up-to-date. The motivation for doing digital research is presented well in this book. Just students in our university are looking for more practical guidance and examples from the methodological point of view.

Dr Vladimir Ryabov

School of Business and Culture, Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Scie

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Peter Halfpenny

Peter Halfpenny is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. He was Executive Director of the ESRC National Centre for e-Social Science from 2004 to 2010, responsible for the overall strategic management of the Centre’s programme of research, outreach and capacity-building. Peter’s own research interests are in the integration of computer tools and services into a comprehensive support environment for social science researcher practitioners, and the investigation of the adoption and adaptation of e-Science tools across the social research community. More About Author

Rob Procter

Rob Procter is Professor of Social Informatics in the Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, where he is deputy head of department and research director of the Warwick Institute for the Science of Cities (WISC), and Exchange Professor, NYU. Previously, he was research director of the ESRC National Centre for e-Social Science, where he contributed to developing innovations in e-Infrastructure, tools and methods in the social sciences. ???????One focus of his current work is methodologies and tools for big social data analytics. Rob led a multidisciplinary team working with the Guardian/LSE on the ‘Reading the Riots’ project,... More About Author